1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to telecommunications systems such as television and TV cable broadcasting. It more particularly relates to a method and apparatus for an efficient video broadcasting.
2. Background Information.
Conventional Television and TV cable broadcasting is generally carried out on a real-time basis. For instance, it takes the same length of time to broadcast or transmit a TV program than it does to receive and display the program. Such broadcasting method has proven to be less than completely desirable due to limited TV bandwidth and channels allocation therein.
Channel availability has been a crucial limitation in the broadcasting industry. Channel allocation has been very valuable and expensive. It has precluded several interested persons, small businesses, consumers and local community chapters from accessing the TV broadcasting networks.
TV broadcasting has become the single most important and popular means for accessing and educating large numbers of citizens. Therefore, TV broadcasting has a direct effect on the right to free speech and expression as guaranteed by several constitutions around the world, including that of the United States of America.
Research and development has been carried out in the TV and video broadcasting field. The following patents exemplify the state of the art in the relevant field:
1. U.S. Pat. No. 4,215,369 by Ijima, entitled "Digital Transmission System for Television Video Signals", and assigned to Nippon Electric Co.
2. U.S. Pat. No. 4,300,161 by Haskell, entitled "Time Compression Multiplexing of Video Signals", and assigned to Bell Telephone Laboratories, Incorporated.
3. U.S. Pat. No. 4,410,980 by Takasaki, entitled "Time Division Multiplexing System", and assigned to Hitachi, Ltd.
4. U.S. Pat. No. 4,533,936 by Tiemann, entitled "System for Encoding and Decoding Video Signals", and assigned to General Electric Co.
5. U.S. Pat. No. 4,593,318 by Eng, entitled "Technique for the Time Compression Multiplexing of Three Television Signals", and assigned to AT&T Bell Laboratories.
6. U.S. Pat. No. 4,646,135 by Eichelberger, entitled "System for Allowing Two Television Programs Simultaneously to Use the Normal Bandwidth for One Program by Chrominance Time Compression and Luminance Bandwidth Reduction", and assigned to General Electric Co.
The United States Department of Defense has sponsored several projects relating to the field of the present invention. The following Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) technical reports exemplify some of these projects:
1. AD-A206 140, entitled "Investigation of Optional Compression Techniques for Dither Coding".
2. AD-A210 974, entitled "Robot Vehicle Video Image Compression".
3. AD-A191 577, entitled "Narrative Compression Coding for a Channel with Errors".
4. AD-A194 681, entitled "SNAP/DDN Interface for Information Exchange".
5. AD-A174 316, entitled "A Packet Communication Network Synthesis and Analysis System".
6. AD-A206 999, entitled "Geometric Methods with Application to Robust Detection and Estimation".
7. AD-A207 814, entitled "Random Transform Analysis of a Probabilistic Method for Image Generation".
8. AD-A188 293, entitled "A Video-Rate CCD Two-Dimensional Cosine Transform Processor".
9. AD-A198 390, entitled "Navy Satellite Communications in the Hellenic Environment".
Wherefore, it would be highly desirable to have a new and improved method and apparatus for increasing channel availability and for rendering the channel allocation process more efficient. The new method and apparatus should be relatively simple and inexpensive to implement and to place into effect. The new method and apparatus should also be capable of being implemented with new as well as existing television sets.